The year is drawing to a close, and as with every other year, it's like "what the f#@k is going on?!"

But despite the uncertainty and the worry --as with every year --Piehole has countless blessings to be thankful for, and that must be celebrated!

2015 was an incredibly fruitful year for us, from Old Paper Houses at the Irondale, to the sold out run of Hand Foot Fizzle Face at JACK, to the recent explorations of our newest project Ski End (working title). What has meant the most through all our growth and success has been the deepening of bonds with our community of supporters, friends, and family. You stoked our creative fires by sharing valuable feedback, donating essential funds, and showing up again and again to make something special happen. We are so lifted, supported, and inspired by you. Thank you!

But you know what? Let's get a little more specific...

As 2015 winds down, we're endlessly thankful for Jessie Renee Hopkins, Benoit Johnson, Emilie Soffe and Ben Vigus, and the countless hours they spent --as writers, performers and collaborators --throwing themselves wholeheartedly into a creative abyss and wrangling with all the stuff that was there... all while being some of the nicest, funniest people you'll ever get to spend time with.

We got the chance to perform with so many mega talented actors this year. The time, effort, patience and creativity they offered us didn't just make our shows shine on stage, but created a wonderfully charged rehearsal room, where chances were taken and discoveries made. Thank you to the incomparable Marcia Brannock,Nora Fox, Emily Jon Mitchell, Stacey Karen Robinson, and Joshua David Robinson.

Thank you to our producers! Maddy Bersin and Katie Naka, you lightened our administrative work-load so we could focus on what was happening on stage. You brought our work to wider audiences. You put out bad fires and started good ones, and you are just awesome to be around. Thank you!

And, of course, none of this would be possible without the tireless, generous work of our stage managers and tech staffers. Mikenzie Ames, Matt Carrington, Kelsey Kennedy, Victoria Rulle and Hannah Spratt, thank you!

And to all the musicians, fortune tellers, DJs and poets who leant their talents to the Old Paper Houses post-show post-utopian hangout zone, thank you for making our dreams come true!

We're thankful for the production assistance and mentorship of New York Theatre Workshop, and our a residency at The Drama League. Both of these establishments created warm and welcoming spaces for us to test out ideas, make mistakes, and score some terrific victories.

Time and again, the New York Theater Workshop offered us mentorship, invaluable critique and that white whale of independent theater: space. Each of the three productions we've worked on this year was heavily supported by this generous establishment.

Thank you also to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council! Being part of the Workspace Residency has been a game-changer for us. Every day, we head to our very own studio overlooking what feels like all of New York City, and --in between Mad Men impressions --we count our lucky stars for this opportunity. More on that here. ​

We are also tremendously thankful to the New Ohio Theater and IRT Theater for giving us the honor of being participants in the 2016-17 NewOhio/IRT Archive Residency. For the next two years, the NewOhio and IRT will provide us with administrative and financial support, workshop space, and a presentation in the 2016 Ice Factory Festival. In the Spring of 2017 the residency will culminate in a four week run as part of the NewOhio Mainstage Season. We are unbelievably grateful for this opportunity, and excited for the relationship we are about to build.

This year we continued our practice of hosting Piehole gyms --theatrical workout sessions where we get to meet new artists, performers get to stretch their muscles without being tied to a production, and as an ensemble we get to work out ideas and generate potential content. We are so thankful to the dedicated, game, and endlessly creative artists who joined us for these gyms in 2015: Patrick Harrison, Djaka Souare, Hye Young Chyun, Rachel Wohlander, Jessica Goldschmidt and Emily Hartford.

We ventured into a lot of hitherto uncharted water in 2015. In trying to become fluent in everything from legalese to exposure, we benefitted from the advice and support of several Piehole mentors. We are so thankful for the time, wisdom and kindness they've shared with us: Jonah Bokaer, Siobhan Burke, Linda Chapman, Roger T Danforth, Peter Durwood, Melanie Joseph, Andrew Kircher, Mimi Lien, Robert Lyons, Kristin Marting, Jim Nicola, Gabriel Shanks, Risa Shoup and Ariana Smart Truman.

Thank you to Miranda Thomas, Charlie Shackleton, Ann, Gertrude and Glenn Suokko for hosting us in the dreamy foothills of Vermont --and for literally giving us shelter from the storm. The space you gave us in your homes (and in the mill) allowed us to start development on our first **Brand New** show in 2.5 years, and the kindness and artistic dedication you demonstrate has been a source of endless inspiration. More on this incredible experience here.

And finally, thank you to our families and loved ones. You are the ones who make all this possible. Thank you for everything!

For the last two summers, Piehole spent time in a semi-moldy, flood-damaged, abandoned ski shop in Bridgewater, Vermont which contained dead birds, a make-shift skate ramp made from a piece of plywood propped on a broken TV set, and a whole lot of inspiring cubby holes. We became obsessed with this space, and the potential it held for our next show. For the past two months, Piehole has been working in an unused level of a skyscraper in Lower Manhattan, with a fallen-from-glory feel (big windows, stunning views, caving ceilings, and strange bursts of wires vomiting from various holes in the floor). These spaces have invaded our imaginations and influenced everything we’ve been making, both consciously and unconsciously.

When I think about the work we’ve developed so far through the lens of these spaces, I keep returning to a nostalgic way of thinking: the glory, ambition and success that once existed in these spaces versus the ruins of now seemingly useless excesses. It’s odd to feel nostalgia over something you don’t really care about (i.e. skiing and banking). Our emotional relationship to these spaces has shaped our investigation of how people project emotions onto spaces.

Without getting into the logic or the history of what led us to which source materials, I’ll just list our mishmash of sources: the ski shop, Romantic landscapes drawn from paintings and literatures, specifically Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, along with our own thinking about our teenage selves, and what teenagers are like. We hit the rehearsal room with our ideas, discussions, and research, and worked feverishly toward the unknown. Our process culminated with a presentation of material to some trusty artist friends who gave us invaluable feedback.

It’s funny to look back at this exploratory workshop and try to sum up what we created: Our actors discussed what it takes to be a positive force in the world, while trading off emotions and outdoor activities in an elaborate juggling act. We tried performing indoor emotions, outdoor emotions, and outer space emotions. We investigated what in the Universe it would feel like to try to turn emotions into objects that we can slot in and out, or look at for a long time without context. We conjured Nature in both dumb and beautiful ways. We collapsed emotions onto nature, drawing inspiration from the Romantic movement. We maximized our use of a fog machine. and made up songs about the healing effects of Alpine climes. We were trapped in an abandoned sporting goods store, which was scary until it wasn’t, until it was again, but in a way that felt full of potential.​That’s a big run down of a lot of play we made really fast. A lot will change and some surprising aspects of what we made will emerge and develop. And looking ahead, we’re excited to round up some more teenagers to work with in our February workshop at the IRT space above the New Ohio, as part of the Archive Residency program. With teens, Romantic imagery, and feelings together in one space, we’re excited to continue our attempt to reach the edges of emotions as we climb to the edge of a cliff, in a great big Frankenstein journey to the edge of the Earth.

Our basements, closets, corners, and drawers are filled to capacity. 8 years of accumulated cardboard, wooden frames and platforms, puppets and embroidery hoops - with many of us having moved from apartment to apartment with an unbelievable pile of painted illustration board in tow - all of which is nothing compared to the effort of coordinating the creation of all these wandering objects. We've always been into "stuff," but where to house, assemble, and play with it has always been a struggle. Rehearsal spaces are wonderful, but they serve so many different people - storing a village of small cardboard houses in any of them would be, well, rude. For years we've fantasized - what if we had a dedicated space where we could have meetings, get on our feet and rehearse, AND store and create the objects that are so important to our work? We came close, once, when Jeff had a small shared studio space in 2009. We couldn't really rehearse there (which didn't stop us from trying) but we could craft and talk. Ever since that taste of the dream we've wanted more. Here are Tara and Allison discussing snacks and dreams on the fire escape of that building, overlooking a pit:

Ah, living and creating in Brooklyn in the late aughts. That's all well and good, but now, finally, we're ready for the big time. Here we are continuing that same conversation on the 30th floor of an office building in Lower Manhattan!

That's right, we've finally made it!! Have we sold out? Cashed in? Gotten involved in a pyramid scheme? No! We are incredibly grateful to announce that we are part of LMCC's 2015/2016 Workspace program. That means that we, along with a diverse community of other artists, are haunting an unused floor of an office building under the guidance of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. We have our own studio, space to rehearse, and the tremendous honor of making work alongside (and in conversation with) the other participants in the program. We've already started meeting in our office (and enjoying the power of being among the blessed few who don't have to wear suits in this building):

We'll be here until June - just heading on down to the Financial District to write on the windows with chalk markers and decorate the walls with inspiration (Romantic landscape paintings? Tiger Beat pin-ups? We'll have to see!) If anyone would like to point us towards particular haunted spots in this oldest part of fair Manhatto, we'll be receptive to the advice. In the mean time, we'll be dealing with the emotional implications of getting something we've longed for all these years - the opportunity to unite the disparate parts of our practice in one place. But don't worry - we'll never forget our roots:

Ah, the recent past. The recent past of two weeks ago; the slightly less but still essentially recent past of a year before that; the comparatively recent past of Hurricane Irene (the beginning of a fearful awakening here in the Northeast); the less recent but still modern past of textile mills in Vermont - I could go on.

But about what? Piehole's (annual?) retreat to Vermont. That's what. We struck the Hand Foot Fizzle Face set, haphazardly stuffed a car with sleeping bags, snacks, and witch hats, and set off for a week of reflection, research, and mysteries. As is our custom, we were light on the official "planning" side of things.

After a satisfying but ominously damp night of camping, we returned to the "Ski End" in the old Bridgewater, Vermont mill - the site of some surprisingly generative work this time last year. It became the jumping-off point for what we hope will become our next piece. It had not changed. At all. Still empty; still in shambles; maybe a little moldier. What does it mean to encounter a place that you found unexpectedly inspirational and discover that it holds no magic powers? That it's so deeply, melancholically, static? Maybe that's part of the point. We tried out some video experiments to learn more about the space:

And we worried about the curiously beautiful decomposition of last year's dead birds - what were we breathing?

This revisiting of last year's muse raised a lot of questions for us - as did the rain pouring down back at our campsite. The former we'll be exploring for the next year; the latter was solved by a generous offer from a chance encounter. Thanks to the great generosity of Gertrude, Ann, and Glen, Vermont natives and friends of the Shackletons (our hosts for the final leg of the retreat), we stayed in this wonderful witch cabin up in the hills:

Our hosts were kind enough to share bits of their lives with us, both through their work as artists and craftspeople, and also through stories and snapshots running back through the recent past, the not-so-recent past, and the past-past, all intertwined with the history of the mill and the legacies of Woodstock and Bridgewater. We went to a museum to learn more:

So expect some musings about the relationship between captains of industry, environmentalism, and certain kinds of voice-overs. In our open-hearted exhaustion different facts and threads began to oscillate in and out of meaning; every spare moment was devoted to solving puzzles and jumbling them again. That is, aside from the vast expanses of time we spent cooking and eating:

As the week bled into the weekend we entered the warm bosom of the Shackleton homestead, where we gratefully let others take over the cooking. We spent the extra time discovering different spots in the woods and fields to plop down and do a Bernadette Mayer writing exercise, or to bring up a new question about the Ski End and its history (or someone's history, at least). More trips to the Ski End ensued; more chances to walk in the woods and talk with the gathering crowd of artists/people-with-a-creative-practice/right-good-thinkers/adorable dogs.

And so, after one night in a tent, two nights in a magick cabin, and four nights in a barn with approximately 30 other people, we called it a week. A week of hard work that can't be held in anyone's hand; of fewer-than-usual injuries; of worrisome sleepiness, hot dogs, and whiskey. Oh, and the past - and, I guess, the present, of course and...well, I mean you'll see - the future. Our thanks to Wink and Charlie, to Wink's mother who stayed on this plane just long enough to bless the event and whose legacy was felt by all, to Elliot (yes, it was an inside job) and Sophie, to the people who shared their stories with us, and finally to the teens who can't help but build a makeshift skate ramp with a broken tv and a plank of wood in all the abandoned spaces of America. A toast to all. Happy belated 4th of July.

THE SKI END

THE WITCH CABIN

SLOPED STRUCTURES: MISC. VT

THE BRIDGEWATER MEET-UP

Hi all, Allison here with a little reflection on HAND FOOT FIZZLE FACE in relation to WORK. Specifically, my work, or rather, the work for which I earn a modest salary at the Museum of Modern Art. Before I begin, let me just say that I truly value the work that I do, the people with whom I work, and the fact that I’m lucky enough to work at one of a very few unionized cultural institutions. That being said, my union, Local 2110, Professional and Administrative Staff Association of The Museum of Modern Art (PASTA-MoMA), is involved in a rather hairy contract negotiation with museum management. At first I was merely crestfallen to hear that the organization for which I’m able to work partially because it offers excellent health benefits was threatening to severely cut those benefits - until I realized how deeply my feelings on the matter were beginning to align with HFFF. Then I was...more productively crestfallen. The thing is, I’ve only been at the MoMA for about 9 months, but at every single staff meeting we’ve heard that this is the museum’s best year ever, that the endowment is at an incredible all-time high, that retail sales are through the roof, etc. To suddenly hear a change of tune, right as our contract runs out, that things are inexplicably maybe going to start looking grim, has created the impression that not only is our work undervalued, but so too are our critical thinking abilities. Then, to threaten our health care specifically, to insist that we shoulder a new burden that threatens our medical care without a commensurate wage increase, feels like a direct assault on our bodies. Bodies, minds, work. Bodies, minds, work - and art. Specifically, some of the most admired, expensive art in the world.

So here we are, aware of our suddenly more fragile-seeming bodies, tasked with the care of this massive collection of incredible, beautiful, moving objects. I mostly sit in my office tinkering with the collections database, but sometimes I have the great pleasure of entering the galleries and spending some time with the pieces it catalogs. It’s startling to find that, when you realize that the institution partially responsible for the fame and value of these objects is trying to get your work/time/body at a discount (and during a flush year at that), the power of these pieces - well - it fizzles. They fizzle. They’re just sitting there being worth more than your health, and their emotional resonance flattens. Sure, I believe that art can have immense value, and that we mere humans use dollars to demonstrate this concept, and all of this is no surprise, but suddenly the strangeness of Foirades/Fizzles - brief meditations on suffering and the human body wrapped in a luxurious, exorbitant package - started to vibrate in my own body. My own body which may end up forgoing that foot surgery I should probably have - it’s not really that necessary and will only prevent my knees from decaying too fast which is probably a fool’s errand after all, right? Maybe a new building to share more of the MoMA’s collection with the public is more important than offsetting the cost of my partner’s sure-to-collapse-someday lung - or maybe it does more damage to the work and the artists’ intentions to finance a shiny new building (or package, if you will) on the backs of workers. I’m under the impression that there isn’t too much union-busting, anti-labor art in the collection but hey, what do I know. On the other hand, maybe the more glamorous, expensive, and anti-labor the museum becomes, and the more at odds with some of the art/themes contained therein, the more new art can spring from the crackling cognitive dissonance of that juxtaposition - and so on...prodding...calibrating...fizzling...fizzling...fizzling...

Although the arranged marriage between Jasper Johns and Samuel Beckett that produced the art book Foirades/Fizzles was not a match made in heaven, we can guess why publisher Vera Lindsay thought it might be a good idea. Employing a variety of media including painting, various forms of printmaking, and collage, Johns’ work regularly recycles materials and imagery from trash heaps, popular cultural, and his own previous creations. Says Joan Rothfuss, “he establishes a motif, most often in a painting, and then reworks it again and again, changing media, scale, or system, just to see what happens to it.”

Beckett’s prose work displays a similarly obsessive repetition, with facsimiles of phrases and characters recurring as the author circled around themes of human loneliness and isolation. S.E. Gontarski describes Beckett body of work as a process of distillation through which “novels were often reduced to stories, stories pared to fragments, first abandoned then unabandoned and ‘completed’ through the act of publication.”

When Lindsay first paired the two artists in 1972, Beckett suggested that they work with the text of Waiting for Godot. Johns rejected the idea, preferring to work with unpublished (i.e. uncompleted) material (we can imagine Beckett’s words fizzling in that unbridgeable gulf in one of the few photos of the pair). Instead, Beckett sent Johns collection of eight prose poems that were eventually published on their own 1976, the same year Petersburg Press produced 250 limited edition copies of Foirades/Fizzles. So much for using exclusive, unpublished work.

Johns selected five of Beckett’s eight fizzles, and then turned to a previous creation of his own. Untitled (1972) is a 6 foot tall panorama of four discrete panels—one of a crosshatching motif that appears in much of Johns’ repertoire, two with flagstone imagery, and a fourth with plaster casts of human body parts mounted on wooden slats and affixed to the canvas. For the Petersburg book, Johns created a series of etchings that refract and rearrange the elements of Untitled (1972): variations on the crosshatchings, obsessively re-printed flagstones, and the body parts of the fourth panel rendered with different textures, contrasts, and scales. To introduce each fizzle, Johns also created stencils of the numbers one through five, a motif that he had been reshaping in paintings and prints for the past 10 years.

Scholars have devoted reams of paper to naming the precise logic that guided Johns in his obsessive duplication of the images in Foirades/Fizzles. “Above all,” says Richard Field, “Johns wished to demonstrate that the four panels [of Untitled (1972)] were not a totally arbitrary assemblage.” As if somehow, by creating variations on these motifs and by pairing them with further discontinuous texts, the reader might be able to invent the pathways that traverse the gulf between the four discrete panels. But whatever hope of clear insight we may have, the book refuses to supply the satisfying synthesis. As Rothfuss notes, when we linger too long amidst the handmade pages of Foirades/Fizzles, “we are left with a vague sense of something amiss.”

The three slideshows in the blog post represent an attempt to trace down the echoes of the fizzled collaboration between Johns and Beckett: the three fizzles omitted from Foirades/Fizzles, paired with other Johns experiments with the imagery from Untitled (1972) and from his settings of numbers. They remind us that the sense of something amiss generated within Foirades/Fizzles also reverberates outwards, recycled again and again in image and text. Or, as one of the fizzles describes:

"Then the echo is heard, as loud at first as the sound that woke it and repeated sometimes a good score of times, each time a little weaker, no, sometimes louder than the time before, till finally it dies away."

In 2012, we worked tirelessly with a team of artists to explode a collaborative art book by Jasper Johns and Samuel Beckett into performance. The culmination of this attempt was a one-night only eruption hosted by Triple Canopy, where many things broke, not least of all our brains. One of our main collaborators on this piece, composer Lea Bertucci, then moved away from the city, and we moved on from the project.

Three years later, Lea returned to the city and we decided to pick it up again. With very little record of what we did in 2012, but with average-sized memories, we met up again to re-evaluate our previous approach, and to reconsider the Foirades/Fizzles anew.

Revisiting the book, we came across the photo of Johns and Beckett which we had seen many times before (the only one I’ve been able to find, PLEASE TELL ME IF YOU KNOW OF ANOTHER!). Although the two impressive figures share a couch, the central focus of the photograph is the space between the two artists, which appears as a massive, unbridgeable gulf.

I recalled that this image and the bizarre circumstances of the two artists’ collaboration was the initial draw to this source material. The collaboration itself was conceived by a publisher, Vera Lindsay, in 1972, who put these two artists together to create a limited edition art-book, which now costs $30,000 per copy. Beckett and Johns agreed to the collaboration, and met, but did not necessarily…get along. Their contributions to Foirades/Fizzles were determined wholly independently of one another, both the writing and imagery having been created based on each artist's past work, rather than in conversation with each other’s works. And yet, there is a palpable resonance between the images and text which extends through overlapping themes, evocations, and even processes. Both the imagery and text asks the viewer/reader to engage, to search for meaning, and to encounter the materiality of one’s own body. Lightness and darkness exist in this pursuit, along with despair, hope, and humor. Piehole obsesses over being human, what it means, and all the ways in which it is possible to feel like an alien robot. The strange Beckett-Johns encounter translates to the imperfect meeting of their work in Foirades/Fizzles, and cuts to the very core of the content of each artist's work. All of it fizzles. All of it promises and works to fulfill that promise, but falls short. And in this falling short, humanity leaks out, along with a great deal of bodily fluids. We aim to enlist the theatrical encounter to draw attention to all that is strange about human persons, and "the body on its way."

Having just completed a two-year project about utopian longing and communal striving, it feels a little funny now to say that we’re doing a piece about the body’s toil, failure and the steady unsteady movement toward death. And yet, this laboratory-cum-gymnasium of human existence that we’re immersed in right now feels like a natural progression coming off of Old Paper Houses. In that project, we tried to examine what allows us to experience hope and make space for doubt in the context of communal expressions of idealism. HAND FOOT FIZZLE FACE is a continuation of this investigation, but with a focus on the inner world of the body and mind. As opposed to a meeting of the minds, HAND FOOT FIZZLE FACE explores the fracturing, fragmenting, multiplying selves that make up an ever elusive object-self.

Although for us the progression from Old Paper Houses to HAND FOOT FIZZLE FACE seems more and more inevitable and obvious, we still would like to bridge the gap, from 2012 til now, by listing all the matters of note that we can recall having happened to our bodies over the last three years:

Tried, unsuccessfully, to whiten my teeth Some kind of ear problem Some mysterious stomach bug in England Switched birth control brands Lost Blood from Time to Time Lost health insurance Lost 35 pounds Gained 7-10 pounds1 instance of terrible stomach flu 1 pedicure 1 super weird sunburn on my hand Multiple colds 100s of yeast infections At least 8 haircuts Many sunburns Last week, I got three blisters on my hands. This is the only time I've gotten blisters on my hands in the past three years. 2nd-degree burn from coffee spill on my left handHad a bad 3-day flu Had carpal tunnels for a few months from a freelance job involving too many hours at a computer Had hangovers/started getting better at preventing hangovers Had craniosacral therapy to balance my energy Got in a car accident Got five haircuts Got painful inner mouth canker sores from stress. Got a filling Got debilitating allergies every May that kept me from leaving my bed Got a relatively bad corneal abrasion in the left eye from an accidental eye-poking. Was blind for 2 days. Developed a greater discomfort with my sexuality I have a collection of new scars from mysterious hives that I started getting along my jaw Took a handful of ballet classes Taken to Getting Up Again Saw an X-Ray of my hips Picked a new eyebrow shape Fell down and sprained my wrist but after about two years it stopped hurting Shaved my beard three times Skin abrasions from rubbing against the seats and seatbelt in car accident Hepatitis A vaccine Typhoid vaccine DTaP vaccine Sprained my ankle running down subway steps when I was late for work. Grew long beards every winter and shaved them off completely every Spring. Airbag burns on my face and seatbelt bruises on my body from being in a car getting hit by another car and flying into a wall Broke my foot Bruised my toenail Burned my hand Broke a nail Bruised ribs Began needing more sleep Started finding more grey hairs Started getting my period again (i.e. switched birth control) Started to feel hip soreness/pain for the first time, regularly Started to feel knee soreness from time to time

The Fizzles are back! Well of course they never left because it is not in their nature to change, but we're here with them again, and things are off to a great start!

Thanks to our new residency at the wonderful NY Drama League, we were able to start testing out the material on willing and able members of the Piehole community. Under the supervision of a disembodied computer voice, we conducted a suite of experiments involving Beckett's 'Fizzles' text fragments alongside a range of stimuli, reactive response prompts, and followed by a sweet, savory and alcoholic refreshment selection. Piehole's LotF was in service of the development of our upcoming project HAND FOOT FIZZLE FACE, @ JACK this June.

Our run of Old Paper Houses at the Irondale Center was the culmination of two years of striving, reaching for big yellow balloons, and affirming how, despite the cold and the fact that sometimes things end, we keep on marching forward and finding new ways to make meaningful experiences together. This was the largest Piehole production to date. It allowed us to share our work with new audiences. And it was accompanied by an unprecedented show of support from the Piehole community. For that we offer you our deepest thanks.

Because of your presence and participation our own little utopia flickered into life, full of work and play and transcendentalism (and free pizza and analog video art). Our infinite gratitude goes out to our incredible audiences, generous donors, sponsors, gifted designers, the wonderful Irondale staff and everyone who so joyously shared their talents in the 70s Room. You helped us create a meaningful-look-across-a-crowded-room for those seeking fulfillment, meaning and communion.

Among the great joys of this run of Old Paper Houses was the coming together we experienced with our audiences after each performance. In a show that considers how often endeavors towards intentional community collapse, it was important to give those who wanted it a space to create a meaningful moment of community.﻿﻿

If you joined us after the show in the 70s Room witnessed one of our many incredible performers...

watched yourself inside a video game,

received some much-needed spiritual guidance

been recruited by a witch

felt that "I'm ok, and you're ok"

not felt guilty about asking to have your picture taken

been part of a reunion (family, high school or work)

sung with your eyes closed

found something to do with your hands because talking to people can be hard

and maybe caught a glimpse of a Piehole grinning in the corner at how this intergenerational, post-utopianist hang-out brought about the sense of delight and presence that we strive for in all of our work.

Hi everyone! Old Paper Houses is in full swing, and we've seen a lot of beautiful, friendly faces in the house so far. We love you! Tonight's a night off, so in addition to falling asleep on the floor for two hours, I thought I'd stop by to say a few words about our friends at Tender Buttons Press. If you've been to one of our post-show/post-utopian hangs you might have noticed a few lovely little stacks of books for sale. There are two titles - Sonnets (a reissue of Bernadette Mayer's important 1989 text) and Please Add to This List, a companion teaching guide to Mayer's work. If you're interested in the poetry that has sustained our brains over these past couple of years, you should definitely check these out! From Tender Buttons' website: "Sonnets, first published in 1989 asTender Buttons #1is widely considered to be one of the most generative and innovative works of contemporary American poetry, radically rethinking the traditional sonnet form. This expanded 25th Anniversary edition includes a new preface by Bernadette Mayer, an editor's note by Tender Buttons Press publisher Lee Ann Brown, and a selection of previously unpublished archival material including the Skinny Sonnets, described as "Hypnogogic Word Playing in Reporters' Notebooks" which further expand our map of Bernadette Mayer's ground-breaking works of writing consciousness."

But look, that's not the whole story. Sure, it makes sense to have a couple of Mayer's works for sale (support poetry! support small presses!) but we're all about community and connections, right? So here's the deal. When we were just starting to get really deep into Old Paper Houses, over a year ago, Tara was assisting on Jay Scheib's Platonov. During that process she got to talking with one of the cast members, the brilliant Tony Torn, and when she mentioned that she was working on a show that drew from some Bernadette Mayer pieces he said "oh we know Bernadette, we love Bernadette." Turns out his wife LeeAnn Brown has published some of her work (with Tender Buttons press), and they're old friends. As Tara puts it: "Then as I was binge reading some more Mayer I noticed a reference to LeeAnn and Tony's wedding and thought, what is happening!" What is happening - such a wonderful, generative thought! Small worlds, coincidences - these things just feel so good! When we performed the previous version of Old Paper Houses Tony and LeeAnn came with Bernadette. This was a moment of abject terror and true exhilaration, of course - we could hear her wonderful laugh in the audience and had to do everything in our power to keep from exploding with excitement. If anything, that was the moment that galvanized us most to keep going with the piece - and so it brings us great pleasure that Tender Buttons is peddling their wares in our temporary world - and that this reissue is so beautifully timed! Suffice it to say - buy one or both of these books! There's definitely enough serendipity behind them to bring you good luck.

Look that's us with Bernadette after the show last Spring! AAAAHHHH!!!!